thenewinquiry:

by Matt Pearce

“I am not a hero. I was only using the keyboard, Mona, on the internet, I never put my life in danger, the real heroes are the ones on the ground. … This revolution belonged to the internet youth, then the revolution belonged to the Egyptian youth, then the revolution belonged to all of Egypt. It has no hero, no one should steal its thunder, we are all heroes.”

—Wael Ghonim, Google executive and an architect of Egypt’s January 25 revolution; interview (in Arabic) on Dream TV, February 7, after release from imprisonment

November 20, 2011

They were doing it for dignity, they were doing it for Egypt, they did it for their sons and daughters and the wives they didn’t have yet, they did it for the hell of it, they did it because Fuck the Police, they did it just to do it in the street where everybody else was doing it: These mostly young men, wrapped in dark jackets and keffiyehs, breaking up sidewalks with poles and small boulders to create more ammunition to throw at the state security forces with frightening, insane confidence. They did it because it was now November and no longer January, they did it because they wanted their revolution back, they did it because they’d gotten used to doing it and had sworn they’d do it again.

They’d been throwing rocks since afternoon after setting a police truck afire and had gotten quite organized by the time I arrived at Tahrir Square after midnight. Self-appointed watchmen banged on the metal railings to warn where there was imminent danger, which seemed like it was almost everywhere, and volunteers lined up with vinegar and solution to purge the tear gas from stinging eyes and lungs as medical staff organized field hospitals to handle the wounded, whose numbers had already reached the hundreds. They’d seen this all before, after all. They were men of the square, there to fight and perhaps to die, and if they were to die, they already knew how they would go about it.

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(Source: thenewinquiry)